When the ancient Greeks told the legend of Icarus, doomed to forever be a warning against flying too close to the sun, they couldn’t have known that the real dangers at such heights would be athlete’s foot and strangers’ pee.
But here we are – because, apparently, some of you need telling: don’t take your shoes off on an airplane. They’re gross. “Cabins are cleaned prior to every flight,” pilot Patrick Smith, author of website Ask the Pilot, told Travel + Leisure back in 2022, “but that will be more perfunctory on a quick turn when there are only 15 or 20 minutes to get it done.”
Even in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when we’ve all been more aware than ever of hygiene practices and the importance of not sharing germs with strangers, there’s no guarantee that airlines are performing the kind of cleaning you’d expect between flights. It could be as little as chucking out the garbage and wiping down the door handles.
“If a plane sits for longer than eight hours – typically a long-haul jet – then the airline will perform a deep clean,” explained Mike Arnot as part of a write-up on airline cleaning processes for the New York Times. “During a deep clean, every seat cushion is removed, the seats are vacuumed and the carpet is shampooed throughout the cabin.”
But such regimens are often few and far between. Much more likely is that the plane you’re boarding has been, at best, “fogged” – that is, sprayed throughout with electrostatically charged droplets of disinfectant. “It’s a little bit like rubbing a balloon on your hair, then sticking the balloon to the wall,” Joshua Robertson, the chief executive of EMist, a Texas company that manufactures electrostatic sprayers for United Airlines and Alaska told the Times. “Every single molecule leaving that nozzle is charged. They are attracted to surfaces like a magnet.”
In practice, this looks like a cleaner armed with a backpack filled with disinfectant and a spray nozzle, filling every corner of the cabin with a fine mist. Once this is done, a full team may enter and wipe down high-touch areas like chair arms and door handles with disinfectant wipes, and – if time allows, which it often does not – the carpet may be vacuumed.
Obviously, such a system is not as rigorous as a deep clean – but it’s definitely not the least you can expect. Airlines are notoriously driven by profit margins rather than, you know, passenger comfort or safety, and every extra second counts. Spills or splashes are spot cleaned, but not necessarily disinfected; fogging may be omitted if the plane needs a quicker turn – and, worst of all, there’s no requirement for the plane, even in the bathrooms, to be cleaned mid-flight. Yes, even if somebody makes, ahem, a mess.
All of which means, basically: keep your shoes on. “Those who decide to go barefoot might be picking up bacteria and viruses that could negatively impact their health,” David Krause, owner of SyQuest USA, which manufactures cleaning products used on airplanes, told Travel + Leisure. “Likewise, the concern of picking up a fungal infection is always there as well.”
In fact, you know what? Might be a good idea to wear gloves, too. Just to be safe.
